To most people, hydrogen power might sound like something out of
Star Trek, but not to Roger Billings. Known to many who follow
his exploits as Dr. Hydrogen, Billings is an affable inventor who
has been promoting hydrogen since he was in high school. He has
built hydrogen cars and a hydrogen house. He has converted small
appliances to run on it, and he owns patents on hydrogen
processes. He's a professor at an institution called the
International Academy of Science, an unaccredited, nonprofit
group in Independence, Mo., that conducts hydrogen research and
grants degrees. Billings himself received one of its first Doctor
of Research degrees.

Billings has been frustrated by America's refusal to embrace
hydrogen power, which in his opinion is "the only way to go."
That's why he likes President Bush's proposal to spend $1.2
billion to develop hydrogen-powered cars. "I think for the first
time in 30 years the government has its act together on
hydrogen," he says.

Billings started his experiments in 1965 as a student in Provo,
Utah, when he modified a Model A Ford to run on hydrogen. In 1977
he drove a hydrogen-powered Cadillac in President Carter's
Inauguration parade. In 1991 he converted a battery-operated Ford
Fiesta donated by the Postal Service into what he claims is the
world's first hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicle.

To conduct his hydrogen experiments and other ventures, Billings
has started many companies over the years, first in Provo and
later in suburban Kansas City, Mo. Billings says he has invested
millions of dollars of his money from his profits in software
development. Other support, he says, comes from the auto industry
and its suppliers. Many of his experiments have been carried out
in an abandoned quarry near his office.

The biggest obstacle to the widespread use of hydrogen power is
the enormous amount of energy necessary to produce hydrogen in
the first place. Billings has a ready answer: Build dozens of
coal gasification plants across America to produce hydrogen from
deposits of low-grade coal. "It's not an easy way to go," he
admits. "It will take some real work to get us there."

Of course, that's what another inventor, Louis Enricht, thought
when he sold his hydrogen formula for powering cars to the Maxim
Munitions Corp. for a reported $1 million. A spokesman for Maxim,
every bit as excited about the prospects as Billings, announced
that "experiments up to this time prove conclusively that this
invention, when fully perfected in some of its minor details,
will be revolutionary in character."